The Future of the US Space Program

Page 1, Why the United States Should Remain in Space

University of Houston

The future of the USSpace Program

Debate

Fidele Twagirayezu

Why the United States Should Remain in Space

There are many good reasons for the United States to continue future plans for extended spaceflight. And I think that most of Americans have already heard of, some of them have been debated policy circles and evaluated on the basis of financial investment. The main reasons why the United States has to continue future plans for extended spaceflight are for purposes of scientific discovery, economic benefit, and national security.

Extended space missions by NASA help for understanding and protecting our species from all kind of threats. Scientists agree that there was bombarded by cosmic flying rocks such as asteroids and comets, and some suggest that this past bombardment led to mass extinction of dinosaurs. So actually there is no real equation that show that what happened in the past time of the Earth could not repeat, that is why NASA has to make sure that the Earth is not in danger by exploring the solar system and beyond in search for understanding the causes of primitive bombardment and track flying objects that may be in collision course with Earth. That is why missions such as Near-Earth Objects missions are going on to ensure that Earth is safe. Extended spaceflight will also help the US to use even deep space for national defense purpose.

Extended spaceflight will help humans to settle new space frontiers in the cosmos and maintain US leadership in space. The desire for exploration is not for luxury, but it seems to be into the gens of humans because the human history has been characterized by migrations from Africa, now humans have visited or settled every corner of the globe. The instinct to explore is still active, but there are very few outlets. Some people seek out extreme or exotic places to satisfy this need, risking their lives to do so; during their migrations they discover many exciting things, in the same way, spaceflight will probably help to discover new things.

Extended spaceflight could help to boost the economy here on Earth, as the planet Earth is progressively running out natural resources, space missions will help to get access to most important sources for resources the solar system and beyond, for example Titan has oceans of methane, and recently, NASA discovered a planet that is entirely made of diamonds, all these resources cannot be attained without spaceflight. Extended space missions are also expected to create jobs because these missions need skilled people.

As extended spaceflight needs most advanced space equipment, future plans for extended space flights will require most sophisticated technologies, so this will advance technologies because new knowledge will be applied to meet the requirements for these kind of space missions, in other words, extended spaceflight will need new technology, for example, the missions to Mars are forcing NASA and space companies to develop new techniques to get in space.

One of the major reasons NASA could continue future plan for extended spaceflight is the search for life and habitable zone in the outer space. Science agrees that life will cease to exist on Earth in the future ,in other words, conditions that favor the existence and evolution will vanish, so humans have ho real future on this planet, the only way to remedy the problem is the human expansion in the cosmos, and this cannot be done without extended spaceflight. Another reason for extended spaceflight is the search for life beyond the Earth, some scientific theories and equations show that life may exist elsewhere in the universe, so extended spaceflight will help scientists to verify those theories and equations.